Surprise
President Donald Trump’s top budget officer is playing down concerns among Republican senators that the administration’s sweeping megabill will add to the budget deficit and result in politically punishing Medicaid cuts…
Trump’s domestic policy package, which passed the House by a single vote in May, faces a rocky road in the Senate. One obstacle: Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, as well as Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), have all signaled discomfort in the face of potential cuts to Medicaid.
Despite Trump’s insistence in April that there would be no cuts to the critical health program, a Congressional Budget Office report last month estimated 10.3 million people would lose coverage if the Medicaid portions of the megabill see daylight…
“I think they’re totally ridiculous. This is astroturf. This bill will preserve and protect the programs, the social safety net, but it will make it much more common sense,” Vought told Bash.
“Look, one out of every $5 or $6 in Medicaid is improper. We have illegal immigrants on the program. We have able-bodied working adults that don’t have a work requirement that they would have in TANF or even SNAP. And those are something that’s very important to institute. That’s what this bill does. No one will lose coverage as a result of this bill.”
Meanwhile:
Deficit hawks, including Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson and Elon Musk, have also played up concerns about the bill’s impact on the debt.
“I think that’s the Titanic,” Johnson said in May. Johnson has said he has enough allies in the Senate to stop the process absent what he sees as adequate spending reductions.
Musk told CBS he thinks the bill would increase the deficit and “undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing.”
“I love Elon, this bill doesn’t increase the deficit or hurt the debt,” Vought told Bash on Sunday. “In fact, it lowers it by $1.4 trillion.”
They just make up numbers and I guess we all have to pretend that they are serious people acting in good faith.
Vought is to the federal budget what Stephen Miller is to immigration: a fascist.